Candidate Biography (submitted by candidate):

Brad Miller was born in Fayetteville in 1953. He attended public schools and graduated from Terry Sanford High School in 1971. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a master's degree from the London School of Economics, and a law degree from Columbia University.

Brad served 4 terms in the North Carolina House Legislature. He introduced legislation to expand North Carolina's domestic violence law; to reduce air pollution from cars and trucks; to limit the influence of political patronage in state government hiring; to protect consumers, and helped guide into law legislation to address racial profiling.

Since being elected to Congress in 2002, Brad has been a leader in protecting vulnerable consumers and has taken on some of the most powerful business interests in the country to help working and middle class families save their homes from foreclosure. Other issues that Brad has been a champion of for North Carolinians include:

• Pioneering much of the legislation in the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which ensures taxpayers will never again have to bail out Wall Street banks by putting an end to "too big to fail" firms and preventing risky behavior from threatening to bring down the entire economy.

• Being one of the first Members of the House to propose the Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). The CFPA is the new, independent financial watchdog agency devoted solely to protecting the public from unfair and abusive consumer financial practices. Consumers should not have to worry that the fine print contains hidden fees and traps to cheat them out of their financial security.

• Being a leading voice for community colleges in Congress. Brad knows that working people depend on job training at community colleges when they lose a job or want a better job.

I'm proud to work on issues that matter to North Carolina families -- prohibiting predatory lending practices and helping families save their homes from foreclosure, protecting and creating new jobs, and taking care of the veterans who protect us.

I've worked to protect homeowners and their ticket into the middle class. For years, the financial services industry wrote its own rules.  The result was millions of unnecessary home foreclosures and the loss of $17 trillion in retirement savings for innocent families. I passed legislation to crack down on abusive predatory lending practices in the mortgage industry and introducing legislation to provide emergency relief to homeowners facing foreclosure. With this bill, those days are over and our country can get back to business practices that encourage people to make an honest living.

Our economy isn't working unless middle class workers share in the prosperity. Our country was founded by people who wanted to make an honest living and we need to return to that rather than people on Wall Street who just want to make a killing. To that end we need to make loans available to small businesses so they can hire more workers and get the economy moving again. I've also worked to help community colleges because, I know that working people depend on job training at community colleges when they lose a job or want a better job.

Finally, I am very proud of our men and women in the Armed Services. I regard the benefits that our nation has provided veterans as simple gratitude -- the least we could do for those who have defended our freedom at the risk of their own lives.

I'm frustrated that in Washington scoring political points is more important than helping ordinary Americans. But I won't stop fighting for the changes we need.